In recent years, various electronic apparatuses, such as a personal computer, a digital camera and a PDA, have been gaining in popularity. Such an electronic apparatus has a function of managing still images such as photos. As an image management method, there is known a method of classifying photos into a plurality of groups, for example, based on date/time data which is added to the photos.
In addition, recently, attention has been paid to a moving picture creation technique for creating a moving picture (e.g. photo movie, slide show, etc.) by using still images such as photos. As the moving picture creation technique, for example, there is known a technique wherein still images are classified into a plurality of directories corresponding to a plurality of dates/times of imaging and are stored, and a moving picture is created by using still images in a directory designated by a user.
In an electronic apparatus which displays a slide show, for example, characteristic amounts of images which are stored are extracted, and the degree of similarity between a designated key image and the images is calculated. According to image sort results based on degrees of similarity or a variation function of the degree of similarity, the images are successively selected and displayed.
However, in the method in which the user is made to designate the directory that is a processing target, the still images which are displayed are limited to the still images in the designated directory. It is thus difficult to present to the user a moving picture including unexpected still images (still images, of which the user is unaware), or still images which are not stored in the same directory but have high relevance.
In addition, in the slide show, images that are to be displayed are merely selected successively from still images and are displayed. Thus, it is desired to provide a moving picture which can more interest the user and has a higher audio-visual effect.